[wplug] OT again: LaTeX primers

[Patrick Wagstrom]

> The main problem I have with pdflatex is that it doesn't support postscript
> graphics. This includes pstricks, like another poster mentioned, and it
> also includeds eps graphics files.  Of course, eps files can be converted
> to pdf files using epstopdf. But if going from dvi->ps->pdf is a pain then
> converting 30+ eps files, which can change, to pdf's is also a pain ;).
> This is why I started using makefiles to compile my tex documents. 

Ditto on that one.  It's basically a necessity when you've got various
source graphics and using a bibliography.  Also, it makes it easy to
streamline processes like running thumbpdf.

> The dissertation class stuff for LaTeX that pitt provides is really nice.
> However, it pretty much requires that you use pdflatex so that the hyperref
> package works correctly. Makefiles and a perl script to convert my eps
> files to pdf files made things a lot easier. However I had to quit using
> pstricks, and I never could get pdftricks to work correctly.

I've played a bit with pdftricks with some success.  In reality its just
a hack that allows pdftex to shell out and call regular tex to generate
the figures and import them back in.  I had it working on my own system
just fine, but shared systems usually posed problems for me.

A useful newer package you might want to check out is PyX[1].  Basically
it allows you to programmatically create EPS and PDF files using Python.
LaTeX does all the rendering so the images still look really nice.  It
requires a bit more thinking than drawing it using xfig, but works well
for generating graphs with data that may change.  Also, through a
combination of PyX, ImageMagick, and latex-beamer you can create some
really neato presentations that have movies that actually match your
presentation fonts and colors.

Then again, most of the world still (now?) writes papers using Times New
Roman unjustified Microsoft word with no nice word breaks and poorly
placed figures or create presentations using the stock powerpoint slides
(most of which are really poor).  They'll never understand the pure joy
that comes from tweaking the last little bit of that SVG for use as a
perfectly scalable presentation background or beauty of a well prepared
paper with perfectly placed figures and correctly sized bounding boxes.

::sigh::

--Patrick